The Gohari are a race of nomadic, pansexual people with inherent magic who are suffering at the hands of the Kingdom of Anzor’s angry god, Cenk. By harnessing the nomads’ skills in horsemanship and archery, Anzor has built a powerful, elite class of slave-soldiers who are above and beyond any other kingdom’s army: the Manzakars.
Sold into slavery to save his nomad family from starving, Tikran becomes a Manzakar believing that they are warriors of justice. However, as he campaigns in Gohar, the land of his birth, he realizes that not only is Anzor using the Manzakars to persecute the nomads, but it’s also exploiting the Gohari by enslaving them and stealing their magic—the Essence—to be the most powerful kingdom on the Continent. As the most celebrated Manzakar in Anzor and the king’s personal bodyguard, Tikran must decide if he’s willing to forfeit his dreams of glory—as well as his own life and the lives of those he loves—to stand up for what he believes in and fight for the oppressed people of Gohar.
Workaholic attorney Sabrina is on a booze cruise in the Bahamas when a violent storm pitches her back in time to the Golden Age of Piracy – with a book that describes the fate of Howel Davis, a sailor destined to become a fearsome pirate. When she finds herself falling in love with him, she begins to wonder: Can she use her knowledge to change the past? Is her knowledge a blessing or a curse?
Noor has unusual powers that others fear and covet, powers that she doesn’t know how to control. When her mother is accused of conjuring the jinn and burned at the stake by the Knights Templar, she believes her life is over.
But Noor’s notoriety has reached the ears of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Grand Master of the heretical Assassins, and he recruits her to become a Faithful One, luring her with the promise of revenge. She is trained to become a skilled Assassiyun, then sent to Jerusalem disguised as a lady-in-waiting in King Baldwin’s court with the mission of killing Templars, the sworn enemies of the Assassins.
When Noor discovers that her childhood friend, the young knight Rinan Cawthorne, is also on the Assassin hit list, she finds herself having to choose between what she’s been taught and what she truly believes.